Red Recollection
by vampire princess33
Summary: Upon entering a crime scene very similar to the one where he found his wife and daughter murdered, old memories are awoken.


**A/N: This is the first Mentalist fanfiction I attempt to write so don't be too harsh. It is really dark and angsty.**

**Patric Jane is one of the most interesting characters I have ever seen and I like both his carefree/manipulative and his angsty/hurt personality.**

**Also, I like to try and picture one's subconscious and how someone can immerse and get lost into memories.**

**Reviews are always appreciated. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Mentalist.**

**Red recollection**

Jane realised it the moment he stepped into the house; he didn't need to see the red smiley face on the wall with the victims' blood still fresh and dripping like streaming red tears to know that the culprit was Red John.

It was the same person that had managed to slip away from the police all this time as if he were a ghost and that had been haunting Jane for the last nine years, pulling the poison of revenge deep into his blood.

The woman lied on the staircase, limbs sprawled so that her legs seemed as if they tried to touch the last step, maybe in a wicked interpretation of Procrustes, while her glassy eyes were eternally fixed on the once white ceiling.

Jane had already expected the sight of her sliced throat and the small pool of blood forming on the step of the staircase where her head rested, as he had also expected the small but nevertheless present sting of pain it caused him.

He passed the cold corpse whose only alive feature was the bright red halo of blood around it, letting his CBI Team deal with it and Jane immediately walked down a corridor parallel to the blood-marred staircase.

Jane headed deeper into the house, not bothering to wait for Lisbon who was too busy fussing over the woman's body to notice his venturing away. With a grim certainty, he knew that this wasn't the only body they would find at that house.

He had been waiting for another body with this cold and distant and yet always rational way of thought that was only natural for him when he entered a crime scene.

What he hadn't been expecting though was to find that the ajar door at the end of the dark corridor led to a girl's room that seemed to have come out of a nightmare.

The walls, originally painted a girlish pink and ciel were now stained with crimson blood all over. Jane's gaze fell on a shabby teddy bear sitting on the windowsill and the first frantic thought that popped to his mind was that a careless child had taken a brush and a box of red paint and coloured the teddy bear along with every other object in the room a devilish red colour.

Then he looked at the bed, somehow subconsciously avoiding it since the moment he had entered the room, and Jane felt the colour draining from his face as he took a sharp, shaky breath.

It was as if he was walking into Charlotte's room again to see his daughter murdered and covered in her own blood that had gashed out of her open throat.

The girl on the bed couldn't be older than seven years old. She looked so small and surreal and doll-like on her blood-soaked bed. Jane thought that she could have drowned into her blood, such gory a scene it was.

Only then did Jane notice that the girl was stripped except of her tiny pink underwears.

Jane pressed a hand against his mouth and he slowly started to back away. He closed his eyes, trying to dismiss this scene from his mind, but it kept coming back with a dreadful clarity as if he didn't have the control he would always boast about over his own mind anymore.

But with the eyes of this same scheming and manipulative and observant mind, the girl on the bed had turned into the mental image of his own daughter.

Jane heard a choked sob and only detachedly did he realise that it was coming from his own mouth as he turned abruptly around and started to walk, no, _run_ way from the crime scene and the hauntingly familiar scene of the nursery room.

''Jane, what are you-'' He passed Lisbon without stopping, her voice fading away and being forfotten by the time he left the living room.

No one tried to stop him as he made it out of the house, and Jane was grateful for this, because in his current state he knew he wouldn't be able face anybody.

Jane got into the back seat of one of CBI's cars and slammed the door beside him, his fingers trembling noticably as he locked the door in order to be completely isolated from anyome that might want to come and check on him.

Jane could still remember the time when he had that breakdown shortly after the death of his wife and daughter. He remembered the feeling of asphyxiation and depression mingled with guilt and despair weighing down on him and crushing the last remains of positive feelings he had left inside him back then.

Even though Jane thought he had managed to hide the true pain he was feeling behind a mask of carefree happyness and light-heartness, nothing more than a facade really, his demons were still there, grotesque beasts made of nothing more than his smothered dark feelings, residing just beneath his skin and waiting to claw their way out in the first chance available.

Jane had never managed to let go of these feelings that he knew would always consume him and, little by little, eat away at his heart in the same fashion he could not bear to lose every memory he had of his passed family, no matter how painful some of them might be.

At the moment, Jane was nothing more than a tormented being, a man on fire, and as he doubled over himself in a frantic attempt to ease some of his pain, his face creasing as if it was made of paper, the same paper Jane used to make airplanes when he was sometimes alone at the office, some of the memories came back to his mind.

They had been building up inside him since the moment he entered the house and realised the mother and daughter that had been slaughtered and drenched in their own blood there were two other victioms of Red John's to add in the list.

And maybe, just maybe they had been stirring within the deepest parts of his Memory Palace even before that, but now the memories he cherished and the memories that hurt him and had been permanetly searred in his mind felt like a crescento which he could not hold back anymore.

Jane sunk into them after what felt like a very long time of trying to keep them at bay so as not to break his already feeble facade. He let himself fall, and then keep on falling until the outside world, the inside of the car, Jane's very self blurred and blackened, and only recollections were left bared of anything else.

**xxx**

Jane sat on an old wooden bench, feeling the soft breeze on his face rufling his hair. It was late at night, but the circus was still full of people, wandering around and moving from tent to tent, their full of wonder and excitement expressions showing that they didn't look forward to leaving any time soon.

His part of the show was over. A lot of people had walked into his tent that night, seeking a glimpse of their future, an assurance of good fortune by the Wonder Boy.

They had earned a lot of money for the night, Jane knew it because his father would never be satisfied enough to decide to stop the show before the circus closed if they hadn't.

Now Alex Jane had a handful of money from exploiting his son's psychic abilities and a very good reason not to come back to the carnival before the next morning.

Patric had no doubt his father would spend all of the money into drinking ang gambling, and he made a mental note not to be around when he came home.

Even though Jane had a few money in his pocket and enough of free time- something unusual for him since he was forced to actively take part in the circus performance and not just live in the carnival because of his father's job- but instead of leaving the circus, Jane found himself finding an unoccupied bench and relaxing all by himself.

Smells and sounds flooded around him, and Jane closed his eyes, focusing on each and every one of them.

The smell of salt and butter and the slight popping sound the fried corn made. The sweet smell of molten caramel.

The carnival music coming from speakers somewhere above him and the constant hustle and bustle of the people chatting and laughing in an uproar full of joy as they passed in front of him without really looking at him.

Jane opened his eyes. The bench where he was sitting was a good spot to observe people, something that Jane always found fascinating.

He could always tell many things for one's character by simply watching them for a while. It was a game he liked to play when he was on his own, and Jane found his gaze wondering around, the hubbub of the circus making it even easier for him to concerntrate and spot the right people.

His musings were interupted when he saw a girl walking towards him and instead of passing him by, sitting heavily on the bench next to him.

Jane looked at her, and he felt slightly confused. She looked tense, somehow uncomfortable at being there, even though she turned to gaze straight into his eyes when she sensed he was looking at her and there was nothing timid or wary at her reaction.

The girl shifted closer to him as if unconsciously, her eyes shining with something like mischief and Jane realised that her age was almost the same with him, not older than 17 years old.

''Well, why aren't you talking?'', the girl asked, and Patric asked the first thing that came into his mind before he even knew her name.

''You don't seem to like it here.'', he said, having distinguished the source of her discomfort.

The girl threw her hair behind her shoulders; they were blond and Jane wondered if they would feel as soft as they looked if he touched them.

''The truth is that I don't. And the same goes to you. I have seen you around here, the psychic boy but you don't seem to be very happy with the carnival life.''

Patric felt his lips curling upwards in a smile. He liked this girl, straight to tell directly what she was thinking without thinking of the consequences.

''The truth is that I don't either.''

Jane looked around him for a moment and he saw that most of the people had left or was heading towards their parked cars in order to go back to their houses after the end of the show. An announcement came from the speakers shortly after, saying that the circus was about to close.

The girl jumped up and told him ''The circus is about to close. My whole family work here, but I don't think they'll notice if I leave.''

She extended her hand and Patric looked strangely at him, but nevertheless took it and let her lead him through the herds of the other people that were leaving.

''I'm Angela'', the blond girl said.

Then Patric asked Angela ''Where are we going?'', and her answear, followed by a ringing laughter warmed his insides. ''Anywhere away from here.''

This reminiscence, the first time Jane met his wife-to-be was one of the warmer and happier memories Jane had.

Other images swam into view before his mind's eyes.

The first cry and the first laughter of his new born daughter. Angela's beaming face in the hospital when the doctor announced that they had a healthy little girl and they could take her home.

The moment he and his wife decided their daughter's name ''We will call her Charlotte, just like in Charlotte's web book.''

Himself swing his daughter, higher and higher in their backyard until he told her that she could touch the sky.

And other, blackened by pain and guilt memories.

How Angela pleaded with him to stop appearing as a psychic in the media and how his arrogance was the cause of her and Charlotte's deaths.

Sleeping in his old matress in the house where they would once live all together, the red smiley signature of Red John still staining the wall above him and staring down at his sleeping, tortured with nightmares form like an accusing, avenging God.

The happy memories hurt too much to bear. The painful ones hurt too much to let go.

And red. All the memories soaked in the colour of red that marred their priceless pureness.

Red. The colour of blood. The colour of revenge.

At that moment Jane's whole world swam in red.


End file.
